Obama Tears Down US Economy, Mikhail Gorbachev Endorses Plan

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there can be no other way to say this now. The gloves have to come off. It's time for people to sober up. The president of the United States, Barack Obama, is destroying the United States economy. There is no other way to describe this, systematically destroying it. "Rush, are you saying he's destroying it on purpose?" I'm not going there, it doesn't matter. What matters is the United States economy is being destroyed. Even the Associated Press, government-run Associated Press with a headline: "Big Government Spending Programs Have Opposite Effect on Economy." They are concluding that you cannot spend yourself out of a recession. So what is President Obama planning to do? Spend even more, even sooner. Here is the AP story: "The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market. But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect." It is not just that they aren't working, they are hurting, they are harming.

Anybody with a brain at the outset knew that this would be the result of massive Keynesian type economic spending. The thing that I know -- whether any of them will admit it or not -- is that half of the people in the Obama administration know this as well. What I don't know is whether they're on board for it or whether it's simple party loyalty that is causing them to go along with this. I know the Democrat Party is oriented toward socialism. I know the Democrat Party is oriented toward big government and massive power. I'm speaking specifically of the Democrat Party now. I'm still not convinced the Democrat Party wants to destroy the US economy. I am convinced that Barack Obama, whether he wants to or not, is in the process of destroying it. This and other big-government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect.

"Rates for mortgages and US Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation. That's the Catch-22 threatening to make an awful housing market potentially worse and keep the economy stuck in a funk." This is government-run Associated Press. "Kick-starting the economy requires higher spending, but rising rates mean fewer Americans will be able to refinance their home loans." Kick-starting the economy does not require higher spending, if I may disagree. Kick-starting the economy has nothing to do with the government other than the government getting out of the way, lowering the tax burden on businesses small and large and on individuals so that businesses can hire and so that individuals will be hired and start paying taxes and start earning income. We have a 25-year high in unemployment. We are 1.4% unemployment higher than was predicted by the Obama administration and his Looney Tune of economic advisors headed up by Austan Goolsbee.

Now, this story is focusing on the housing market, and that is a crucial market because for most people their greatest asset is their home and most people's mortgages, or a lot of them, are underwater now. "Some potential buyers will be shut out of the market by higher monthly payments they won't be able to afford," because of this incessant spending. "The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year," and let's be honest, it's going to be over $2 trillion because the tax revenue that's coming in has been greatly reduced because of the unemployment. People are not paying taxes. That $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year is four times as high as last year's all-time high. Stop and think about that. Last year was an all-time high. Obama's budget deficit -- and it is his -- has gone way beyond what the Bush budget for fiscal 2009 projected and allocated, four times the deficit, minimum, as last year's all-time high.

"'The bond market is calling the Federal Reserve out,' said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst at Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Fla. 'Investors are saying that the Fed can't just print money out of thin air to finance a massive deficit.'" This was known at the outset, by the way. This isn't news. This is tested economic theory. "Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged Wednesday in congressional testimony that large budget deficits could threaten financial stability by eventually eroding investor confidence and endangering the economy's prospects for long-term health." He's the number two ranking government official to warn this. Obama was the first about a week before Bernanke did. Now, when Obama says this deficit spending can't be kept up, it's an insult to everybody 'cause it's his deficit spending. He was simply making an excuse to raise taxes, and wait 'til you hear all of the many tax increase plans they have for health care, and one big change from nationalized health care from 1993 or '94 to today. Back in '93 or '94, do you remember the Harry and Louise ads? Those ads were very effective, were run by the insurance companies, opposing nationalized health care. This time around, insurance companies are all for nationalized health care. Do you want to know why?

Obama's nationalized health care will require businesses and individuals to insure everybody who is uninsured whether they want to be or not, that's 50 million new health insurance customers that will happen by government fiat if this health care bill gets passed and is signed into law. And with this as a backdrop: "President Obama met with his cabinet Monday to deliver more than 600,000 jobs through his stimulus plan this summer," Federal Agencies pumping billions into public works projects, schools, and summer youth programs. These are not jobs that will last; these are not career jobs; these are not even jobs that really pay anything. Obama ramping up his stimulus program this week, even as his wife stays in Paris to shop with the kids while Obama continues to warn CEOs not to get on their jets and fly to Las Vegas. For a man who said he didn't have time to see any troops or to meet with Sarkozy or to have some quality time with Angela Merkel, the man had to get back and he got back yesterday and went and played golf at Andrews Air Force Base 90 minutes after arriving back from France, or wherever he was. And Michelle and the daughters are still over there on a sightseeing tour.

To add insult to injury -- dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut -- Mikhail Gorbachev has now entered the world economic question with his own point of view, my friends. Thus it is time for a Gorbasm. I realize that many of you listening to the program today may not know what a Gorbasm is, you are new to the program. Let's go back. It's 1987. It's Washington, DC. The American left, the worldwide left fearful, scared to death that Ronaldus Magnus, the cowboy, is going to hit the nuclear button and blow everybody up. So their first meeting ever, Reagan and Gorbachev scheduled in Washington. Gorbachev's Ilyushin 62 jetliner, technology to build stolen from Boeing, lands at Andrews Air Force Base, on the tarmac assembled State Department people, Washington elites and the media, the Ilyushin 62 taxis in, the front door opens, the steps are rolled into place so that the visiting dignitaries aboard Gorbachev's plane can deplane.

Finally he appears, the man with the expanding forehead birthmark, at the top step, and the assembled crowd from the State Department, the media, the Washington elites have a collective orgasm over the fact that they now feel safe, that the world is safe, that he, Gorbachev, has arrived. The truth be known, Gorbachev was the world's first messiah. Obama is number two. So they had these collective shrieks and they were groaning and that gave birth to the phenomenon known as the Gorbasm. I have met Mikhail Gorbachev at George H.W. Bush's 80th birthday party at Reliant Stadium in Houston. I had my photo taken next to Gorbachev. That photo has appeared at RushLimbaugh.com numerous times, not all the time, but sometimes his birthmark appears on my forehead. It's the strangest damn thing.

Anyway, here's the Gorbachev news. The headline says it all: "Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Perestroika," a new openness and reform in the West. "Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for a perestroika, or top-to-bottom reform, in the West, arguing that its current economic model was 'unsustainable' and needed replacement. Commenting on the current global economic crisis, the ex-Soviet president who presided over the collapse of his country," and that's the right way to describe it. Gorbachev is credited for ending the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the collapse of his country like Barack Obama is presiding over the collapse of his. And so a man who knows how to collapse his own economy is now advising us on how to collapse ours. He said that "it was now clear to him 'that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich.'" He's not talking about Obama's current policies, folks. He's talking about officially ditching capitalism.

Said Mikhail Gorbachev, "The model that emerged during the final decades of the 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable." This is an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, by the way. "Gorbachev wrote in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, 'It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.'" Gorbachev then predicted, "'perhaps even greater upheaval down the road' and insisted that the current economic and social model existing in the West needed replacing." He is endorsing what Obama is doing, tearing apart the greatest economy in the history of the world. Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the collapse of his own economy, is essentially now endorsing the same steps taken by Barack Obama. I don't know about you, when I have a former communist totalitarian dictator articulating policies identical to those being enacted by a United States president, I get scared to damn death.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I didn't know it when I did the open to the program... I got the Gorbachev op-ed today in which Gorbachev claims that we need to junk capitalism and have our own perestroika. This is the man who collapsed his own economy, advising the United States and the entire West on how to collapse theirs. I did not know that today's Pravda made the same point. I have been informed. I have been sent the Pravda story. It's not something I regularly read in the daily show prep process.

Their headline: "Obama Becomes America's Gorbachev -- History may repeat itself two or three times or even reach the point, which Francis Fukuyama described as the end of history. The US historian of Japanese origin introduced the notion during the time when there were two dominating superpowers in the world - the United States and the Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed and Russia lost much of its international influence, the USA became the world's number-one gendarme. That was the time, when US presidents started making one mistake after another. Their mistakes eventually led to the phenomenon, which is currently known as the clash of civilizations. America needed an enemy. America needed oil. Both were found in one country - Iraq." They go on and on to describe some of the mistakes that they think we made.

They go on to make the point that Barack Obama has become America's Gorbachev. Gorbachev presided over the destruction of the Soviet Union, and Barack Obama is presiding over the destruction of the United States of America. There is no other way to say this. Given the economic numbers that we have -- given the 25-year record unemployment, given that there is no positive economic news anywhere -- wouldn't somebody with common sense and a brain think that after... Let's count 'em up here. This is just five months, and then we add October, November... After eight months of an amount of spending that equals $11 trillion and an over $2 trillion budget deficit this year -- after eight months of stimulating the economy in ways that have never been done, under the theory that this was the only way to revive our US economy -- isn't it time to stop and say, "Wait a minute! The political solutions not only aren't working, they are making it worse"?

Eight months, and this kind of spending is enough of a proving ground for me. The sad fact is, I and many of you in this audience don't need a proving ground because we have history on our side. We know where this kind of thing has been tried structurally and philosophically and in reality and we know the disaster that awaits. It hasn't worked any time it's been tried. The only reason somebody in this day and age thinks it will work is because of the personality of Obama. The personality. The cult-like followers of one man think that it is possible because he's a different kind of guy. I need to find an audio sound bite here for you. It's from state-run Newsweek. Let's see. I want you to grab audio sound bite number eight, Mister Broadcast Engineer. Back in 2007, Evan Thomas of Newsweek magazine was asked, "Don't you guys think the you're being awfully hard on George W. Bush?" "No, no, no, no, no," said Evan Thomas of Newsweek, "Our job is to bash the president. That's what the media does. Our job is to bash the president." Now Newsweek is government-run media. Evan Thomas Friday night on MSNBC got a question. The question was this. "You remember 1984? That wasn't 100 years ago. Reagan, World War II the sense of us as the good guys in the world. How are we doing?" Listen to this answer.

THOMAS: We were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama's had really a different task. Uh, we -- we -- we are seen too often as the bad guys, and he has a very different job from -- from -- Reagan was all about America, and he talked about it. Obama is, we are above that now. We're not just parochial. We're not just chauvinistic. We're not just provincial; we stand for something. I mean, in a way, Obama is standing above the country, above the world, a sort of god!

MATTHEWS: N'yeah!

THOMAS: He's -- he's going to bring all different sides together.

RUSH: He's bringing nobody together, but there you have it from government-run Newsweek's Evan Thomas: "He's a god." Obama is a god. Reagan was parochial. Reagan, he only cared about America, but Obama's above that now. He's not chauvinistic. We're just provincial. Ronald Reagan was not provincial. Ronald Reagan understood American exceptionalism, Ronald Reagan understood America's greatness, Ronald Reagan understood America's role in the world for good. Mr. Thomas, Barack Obama sees America's role in the world as not good. It is offensive to the sensibilities of millions of people to hear a member of State-Run Media refer to a half black-half white human being with no experience running anything of substance referred to as a god. He may be president of the United States, but he's a god. Sadly, too many people look at him that way, which is why they can watch with their own eyes and experience with their own lives the destruction of their own lives economically, and still find a way to hold the man responsible for it, Barack Obama, blameless.

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RUSH: If I might correct the architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, well, the partial architect, Ronald Reagan helped as well, that would be Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev, Russia was destroyed, the Soviet Union was destroyed by freedom; it was destroyed by capitalism; it was destroyed by American exceptionalism. Socialism as an opponent to capitalism is what died with the Soviet Union. Communism as an opponent to capitalism is what died. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what Barack Obama inherited. Barack Obama continually, childishly, immaturely blames predecessors for all of the mess that he and he alone has compounded. If he wants to talk about what he inherited, I'd like to put it down on the record what he inherited. The problem is he inherited it temporarily. He's in the process of destroying it.

Barack Obama inherited greatness in a nation. He inherited the birthplace of the individual. He inherited the defender of liberty at home and abroad, the United States of America. He inherited the opportunity to lead a nation of sheer exceptionalism, a nation of equal opportunity, a nation which featured its citizens the right to fail and to try and try and try again. He inherited the financial center and capital of the world. Barack Obama inherited the country that has successfully championed capitalism and widespread prosperity. He inherited a nation which liberated billions of people who lived in oppression. He also inherited great responsibility. He inherited the responsibility to lead this great nation, the world's lone superpower, a nation oriented toward the good of humanity. He inherited the responsibility to preserve and strengthen the free markets and economies that made this the greatest nation in the history of human civilization. He inherited the responsibility to continue the philosophy and the tradition of a country founded on Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and principles.

He inherited the Constitution of the United States. He did not claim the right to remake it, to rewrite it, to change it. He swore to uphold it. And he's in the process of wreaking as much damage to the Constitution as he can get away with, with nominations like Sonia Sotomayor, as he is wreaking damage to the US economy. Barack Obama did not inherit a mess. He leads a mess. He inherited the United States of America, where anything is possible. And greatness has been delivered to the world time after time in the form of private sector inventions, innovations, advancements in products that improve people's lives for over 200 years. He inherited a country of individuals energized by their liberty and strengthened by their character. Barack Obama inherited the leadership of the greatest collection of human beings in the history of human existence.

And what has he done with this inheritance? He has run around the world and apologized at every stop he makes for what he considers the sins, the immorality, and the unjust unfairness of the way he perceives the United States of America. He inherited a country that liberates the oppressed, as I said. He inherited the greatest economy in history. He inherited that, nothing more, nothing less, plus the Constitution. There is nothing to apologize for. It is childish, it's babyish, it is immature, it is unbecoming anyone who holds the office of president of the United States to run around crying like a baby while lying about the mess he inherited, because he didn't inherit a mess. He inherited years and decades of stewardship from the Oval Office of the greatest nation in history. In his mind, he inherited a flawed social experiment. He has now made the mess that is the United States economy. He is making a mess of United States foreign policy.

There is a lot to be proud of this country, but you don't hear much about that from the Oval Office or wherever Obama's teleprompter happens to be planted. We don't hear people in his administration talk about how proud they are of this country and how proud they are of the people who make this country work. There is a lot of work to be done, but not the way Obama is proceeding. He is creating more work for future generations to reclaim their birthright that is the greatness of this country. Barack Obama is destroying what others before him preserved and expanded upon. He's now saying, we can no longer postpone health care, just like we couldn't postpone stimulus, we couldn't postpone TARP, now can't postpone health care. If he gets what he and the Democrats want, single payer national health care, your kids and grandkids can forget the American dream as you and your grandparents knew it.

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RUSH: Couple people with an e-mail: "Rush, that was great, why did you have to refer to Obama as half black and half white? You know everybody's going to focus on that." I intend them to focus on it. Remember the context. Evan Thomas said he was above America, above the world, he's a god. Barack Obama is a human being. He is not a god. I was simply trying to, shall we say, emphasize that proclamation by describing his humanity. He is not a god.